Polyglot progress; learn languages while travelling (secrets of Swedish unlocked)

I have signed up for several languages on Duolingo, as well as on Memrise. I have a cupboard full of dictionaries and grammar books in various languages, mostly saved from trips. I have found a useful double use of languages such as Portuguese, used in Madeira. Russian is used in Bulgaria, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Greek is used in Cyprus - and Turkish in Northern Cyprus. Chinese is used for writing Japanese. Malaysian and Indonesian are almost interchangeable, except for some vocabulary, like British and American English. 

I tried some of the Filipino language, Tagalog. But I don't even need to find one of my dictionaries or books. Nowadays everything is online. If you have a mobile phone, you can learn a language while travelling.

Tamil and Urdu

Yesterday I looked at which new languages had appeared on Duolingo. I thought I would try Tamil or Urdu. Tamil is one of the four official languages of Singapore. However, Urdu is more widely spoken. Maybe that is why it is on Duolingo, whilst Tamil is not yet available.

Hindi is written using Devanagari, (shown at the top) whereas Urdu is written using a modified version of the Arabic script (lower right of the picture), each of which is completely illegible to readers literate only in the other.

I tried the Indian language, Hindi, on Duolingo. You start with the alphabet. It looks pretty. However, it is hard to learn so this is boring and challenging. I would rather start with a couple of easy words for conversation, with a picture.  

After a couple of hours I had managed to get through the first two exercises of matching up the letter sounds to shapes, is this ga or gha, more through process of elimination than by recognizing the shapes.

Easy Spanish

I gave up. I decided to try something easier. Such as Spanish. 

But I felt like tackling something new. How about Swedish? 

Swedish Novelty

So I started Swedish. Swedish is not much use to me. But after a couple of hours I had in my brain words which will stick forever. Salt is salt. Papper is pepper. Man is man. Flicka is girl. Apple is spelled the same, but with a double dot over the a in Swedish. And the le is prounounced with the e accented, like the French word le. 

Flickr was a challenge at first. Then I noticed that the l is in flicka and girl. A young teenage girl is flirting and self consciously flicking her hair. The vowel sound er in Swedish, spelled a, and ir in girl sound similar. G and CK are similar. Flickr, girl. Flickr, girl. Girl - flickr.

Achievement

At last a feeling of achievement. Starting a new language. Being able to recognize a couple of words. 

I can now practise my Swedish on the train. Later on a plane. An end to the stress of travel. A distraction. No more wasted time. A feeling that I have done something useful with my day, even before I reach my destination. A flicker of achievement. For a flickr.

Useful Websites

Duolingo.com